A chronicle of the development of GONE GITMO, a virtual installation of Guantanamo Bay Prison in Second Life. GONE GITMO is a collaboration between Nonny de la Peña and Peggy Weil.

Machinima Report

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

From doldrums to deadline

It’s the summer doldrums in LA, Nonny has just moved back to her home town, I’m in the process of leaving it. Everything is in flux and our project is going nowhere. We’ve been interviewed by New Scientist and Der Spiegel, but our “Letters of Inquiry” to get funding are coming back empty.

I’d discovered the Seton Hall Law School October 2006 Guantánamo Teach-In, a conference involving over 200 law schools and decide to contact them. I make a cold call to Professor Mark Denbeaux who chaired the earlier conference. He calls back almost immediately. I ask whether Seton Hall Law School would be interested in holding their conference, if they were having one this year, in our virtual Guantánamo in Second Life. He replies, “I’m 64 years old, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about but it sounds good,” and then informs us that this year’s event isn’t in October, but on Constitution Day, September 17th which is......we start calculating.....less than a month away.

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Acknowledgments

GONE GITMO was developed at a MacArthur sponsored residency at BAVC New Media Producers Institute in 2007.Thanks to our early supporters: Joi Ito, Ben Batstone-Cunningham, and Steve Anderson and Holly Willis of the Institute for Multimedia Literacy at USC School of Cinemtatic Arts. Acknowledgements also to the Annenberg School of Communicatios: Professor Douglas Thomas, Tori Horton, Evonne Heyning. Also Frank Fox, Cinco Pizzocato and Matthew Lee, Bernard Drax.